Weird Worlds is minimalistic in many ways. First the price: for the money you have to spend you would not even get 2 cups of coffee in a fast food restaurant, if on sale it is even cheaper than a single cup. Thus to expect an epic game with high end graphics and / or a deep story would just be unfair. Second the time: depending on the galaxy size you will spend between 20 minutes and an hour. Third the game play: it is really simplistic. So why bother? Weird Worlds is loads of fun. Just sit down, relax, take neither the game nor yourself too seriously. Each session starts with a random setup so each one is different. It is a game of discovery, encounters and collecting items which have to be brought back home in time. The discovery part wears off a little with time as sooner or later you have found out which objects or creatures are important. And you will be surprised: not everything is what it seems to be. When all secrets are unveiled the challenge is to strive for higher and higher scores – or to solve the very rare special quests, if they appear at all. As all the games are short I never got really upset in the rare events of failure such as gotten too close to a supernova, being defeated by a superior fleet etc. BTW there are ways to defeat most fleets easily and (other than MartiusR says – no offence meant, of course) there is even a remedy for Esmerelda, the annoying thief. Just find out for yourselves ;-)
Why do so many games come without manual? In some cases that might not hurt, but here it does. The in game tutorial ist useless, and I had to search the web for answers. Not good that. Although I am a strategy gamer I had a hard time getting into the battle mechanisms. I recommend to newcomers: start on easy level. You can still switch to higher difficulties any time you want. A spell list, progression stats of each character etc. would have been helpful, too. The missing manual plus some other (minor) flaws costs KB2 a star. E.g. there is a particular side quest called the Scryers Trial, which is so difficult and unfair that I can only warn you: stay away from it unless you want to lose your mind (or at least throw your keyboard out of the window). Other than that I like the game. It combines what (in my opinion) are the center pieces of RPG’s and strategy games. The RPG-part: (re)search dungeons, follow quests and finally solve them. The strategy part: fight tactical battles. If, however, you wish to fight like in classical one person RPG’s, i.e. hitting your keyboard and mouse until they start smoking or if you wish to collect resources, build bases, defend them or conquer new ones you should look somewhere else. Graphics are okay, puzzles range from exceedingly easy to fairly interesting (with some stupid trial and error ones as well) and are rather not for hardcore puzzle solvers. All in all I found KB2 to be addictive, and it was a lot of fun to play.
Soon after having started the game you realize that you play an inferior race. While others are allowed to demand no matter what you are restricted to only very few options. Some of their demands you can comply with, and you better do unless you want to seriously damage your diplomatic standing. In many cases, however, you can't: If two factions are in conflict and each one demands you to take position and act against the opposite side. If you decide to help neither one, you lose sympthy from both sides. Otherwise you lose sympathy from just one side, but that quite a bit. Result: In the long run you will inevitably make enemies. It is only a question of time until you are pushed into a war, like it or not. No chance to improve relations by making gifts. Only the other races are allowed to do so. So once you will end up with war, you can propose an peace treaty only after 15 turns, whereas the opponent is allowed to do so any time he wants. Are these unbalances supposed to be fun? Not for me! There is no way to create custom races. I played Phidi through on normal level. I won any vote I wanted to as well as some battles. Then I gave up due to boredom. Just routine throughout the game, mainly interruped by these troublesome diplomatic events. Or from the occasional chance to battle some Harpys. There is no score at the end of the game anyway, not to mention a hall of fame. So what would I endlessly continue to fight for? The manual is lacking. E.g. until now I haven't found the slightest clue for why some barren planets can be terraformed and others cannot. Nothing to be found in the manual. Pity. The game has quite some potential: the aboriginal inhabitants on some planets, good music, nice graphics …
